COU­PLE EYES XTERRA SWEEP

Hus­band-and-wife Ben Allen and Jac­qui Slack-Allen seek to foil Bradley Weiss and Ca­rina Wasle’s back-to-back ti­tle drive and pull off a sweep of the Xterra Philip­pines se­ries when the off-road triathlon is fired off Sun­day in Danao, Cebu.

Ben and Jac­qui missed the in­au­gu­ral Xterra stag­ing in Danao last year af­ter plac­ing third and sec­ond, re­spec­tively, in Al­bay in 2016 but both are com­ing into the event or­ga­nized by Sun­rise Events, Inc. ready to con­tend with the best in the fold.

Weiss and Wasle won over an in­ter­na­tional field last year but both ex­pect a tougher chal­lenge this time with Allen aim­ing to add the ti­tle to his past Xterra vic­to­ries in Malaysia, Asia Pa­cific Tour, Saipan and Guam.

Two other cou­ples—Jackie Bois­set and Myr­iam Guil­lot-Bois­set of France and Brodie Gard­ner and part­ner Kate Schultz of Aus­tralia—are also en­tered in the 1.5K swim-28K moun­tain bike-8K trail run event serv­ing as the sec­ond of three Xterra races slated at Coco Palms Beach Re­sort and Cebu Tech­no­log­i­cal U in Danao.

Also tipped to con­tend for the crown are New Zealand’s Sam Os­borne and Ja­panese Takahiro Oga­sawara, win­ners of Xterra Saipan in 2017 and 2016, re­spec­tively.